Removing nails from wood is a common occurrence in the building trades. In most situations the craftsman needs to only remove a few nails that may have been driven into the wood improperly or whose removal is required to adjust for a minor modification to the structure being built. For these situations the use of the claws of a hammer or a crowbar is sufficient to remove the nails. However, in certain situations such as a major renovation or during the disassembling and moving a structure (barn or house) to a new location, hundreds or even thousands of nails may need to be removed. Usually in these situations preserving the integrity of the wood for reuse is also important. Using a hammer or crowbar to remove a large number of nails is time consuming and can result in significant damage to the wood. The current disclosure provides for a new tool that greatly reduces the time and effort of pulling nails as well as minimizes the damage to the wood. Given the high cost of lumber, recycling the materials of an entire building is also possible with this new tool. The proposed embedded element pulling apparatus further has embodiments that allow the apparatus to remove staples, screws and other embedded elements from a wide variety of materials.